The Signifier Phallus in Lacan’s Teaching ‒ in reference to the apophatic ontology and its topology as the pure foundation of psychoanalysis

Caravaggio, Giuditta e Oloferne (ca 1597), nel Palazzo Barberini, Roma

The Signifier Phallus in Lacan’s Teaching ‒ in reference to the apophatic ontology and its topology as the pure foundation of psychoanalysis

Luke S. Ogasawara

I. Introduction of the apophatic ontology as das Denken des Seins (thinking of Being)

This text is written to answer to the question someone posed me to know what is the phallus as signifier in Lacan’s teaching. That person is serious enough in his or her interest in Lacan to have read the first text in his Ecrits : The Seminar on “The Purloined Letter”. So I will begin with its first paragraph :

(...) the automatism of repetition (Wiederholungszwang) gets its principle in what we have called insistence of signifier chain. We have taken out this notion as correlative of the ex-sistence (that is, the eccentric place) where we must situate the subject of the unconscious (...). (...) it is in the experience inaugurated by psychoanalysis that we can seize by what mediation of the imaginary the grip of the symbolic can reach even into the most intimate place of human organism.

There, in the first paragraph of the first text of his Ecrits, we can see how Lacan is formulating ‒ explicitly referring to Heidegger’s term “ex-sistence” (Ek-sistenz) ‒ the fundamental of his teaching : not the triad of the symbolic, the imaginary and the real, but the tetrad of the symbolic, the imaginary, the real as insistent repetition of what doesn’t cease to be written (necessary) and the real as ex-sistence of what doesn’t cease not to be written (impossible).

The entire teaching of Lacan is consisting in his effort to found psychoanalysis purely, i.e. non-empirically, with no reference to empirical sciences such as biology, psychology, sociology, etc. What he is referring to is : mathematical topologies of closed surfaces and Borromean knot, Hegel’s dialectic phenomenology and, as we’ve seen above, Heidegger’s thinking of Being (das Denken des Seyns).

This formulation “das Denken des Seyns” with the word “Seyn” crossed out, which is Heidegger’s own expression, seems now to be recognised officially as emblematic of Heidegger’s après-guerre thinking because it is used in the editorial notice on the cover paper of the Gesamtausgabe 98 (the latest volume of his Schwarze Hefte).

I estimate that it is very probable that Lacan invented his mathème of barred subject $ in 1958 out of Heidegger’s Sein which we can find only in one article published in his life time with the title : Zur Seinsfrage (1955, in GA 9).

So in the mathème of barred subject $ we can see how Lacan was already aware in 1958 of the essential importance of thinking of Being in Heidegger’s teaching.

I baptise this thinking of Being “apophatic ontology” after “apophatic theology” (negative theology) where God’s mysterious Being is kept outside the created world of things which are there.

And I think the apophatic ontology and its topology are exactly what Lacan had in his conception as the pure foundation of psychoanalysis.

According to Lacan’s own indications and suggestions in his Seminars in the 1970s, we can formulate as follows :

where we can find correspondence in the topology of projective plane, the structure of alienation, the topology of Borromean knot and the structures of the four discourses.

And we can find also correspondence between Lacan’s topology and Heidegger’s terminology :

the imaginary ‒ consistency ‒ das Seiende als solches im Ganzen (Being as such in whole) ;

the symbolic ‒ hole ‒ die ontologische Differenz (ontological difference) ;

the real as necessary ‒ nodality ‒ der Austrag ;

the real as impossible ‒ ex-sistence ‒ das Sein (Being).

II. The impossible phallus φ

On the basis of the apophatic ontology and its topology we can now make some elucidation on the problem of phallus in Lacan’s teaching.

Because the person who posed me the question read already the Seminar on the Purloined Letter, I refer to that text.

At the end of the session of the 10 March 1971 (the Seminar XVIII) Lacan says that when he talked of the purloined letter which can be found nowhere and which he calls “pure signifier” and “the veritable subject of the conte” he talked in fact of the phallus.

That phallus is defined by Lacan as “signifier of lack-of-being” (signifiant du manque-à-être : in Ecrits, p.710).

Because that phallus is the veritable subject we write it as barred phi like the subject $ :

Because of technical facility we write it also as φ

What Lacan calls “lack-of-being” (manque-à-être) is exactly Heidegger’s Sein (Being).

The phallus φ, pure signifier of Being which can be found nowhere in the locus of Seiendes (things which are there), is what doesn’t cease not to be written, that is, the real as impossible. It can be found nowhere because its locality is ex-sistent to the locus of Seiendes. It is situated in the locality of ex-sistence (coloured red).

And now we can remark that the symbole φ in the schema R (Ecrits, p.553) denotes in fact the impossible phallus φ 

because the S which is situated in the same place as φ in the schema R and which is the same S as in the schema L (Ecrits, p.53) denotes “the subject in its reality, foreclosed as such in the system and entering only under the mode of the dead in the signifier play but becoming the veritable subject as the signifier play lets it be signified” (le sujet dans sa réalité, comme telle forclose dans le système et n’entrant que sous le mode du mort dans le jeu des signifiants, mais devenant le sujet véritable à mesure que ce jeu des signifiants va le faire signifier : in Ecrits, p.551), that is, the S in those schemata is in fact the barred subject $ in the ex-sistent locality of Being (Sein), and correspondingly the φ too.

We can add a remark : if in the schema R what is the real (the real as impossible) is the S and the φ situated at the upper left angle, what is the central zone R ? It is : the real as necessary (what doesn’t cease to be written) of symptoms. We can see also there the tetradic structure implied in Lacan’s teaching.

III. The phallus ( − φ ) as imaginary function of castration

There is another phallus which Lacan denotes with the mathème ( − φ ) [ minus phi ] and defines as “imaginary function of castration” (fonction imaginaire de la castration . in Ecrits, p.825), in other words : imaginary correlate of castration.

The castration complex concerns the anxiety in front of the hole of lack-of-being which opens up in Other’s locus (le lieu de l’Autre) as mother’s body.

The phallus ( − φ ) is a hallucination of lack of phallus at the hole of lack-of-being in Other’s locus. We can say it’s a sort of hallucination because one sees a lack of phallus in place of nothing which can be found at the hole (coloured yellow).

IV. The phallic functions of the sexuation formulae

We have also the phallic functions of the sexuation formulae introduced by Lacan in the Seminar XIX (1971-1972) :

In the standard symbolic logic the bar above a formula means negation. But it’s not exactly so in Lacan’s formulae of sexuation. So we’d better give them other formulations, for example :

Male : ("x) φ(x) Ù ($x) Φ(x)

Female : Ø("x) φ(x) Ù Ø($x) Φ(x)

where the symbole Ø denotes negation.

Here we take into consideration only the male formula and locate it in the schema of alienation as follows :

where the formula ($x) Φ(x) denotes the ex-sistence of the patriarchal phallus (the phallus of the Urvater in Freud’s myth of primitive tribe) in the place of truth (coloured yellow). This schema means : there can be the sexual relationship by means of the patriarchal phallus Φ : “the symbolic phallus, impossible to negativate, signifier of jouissance” (le phallus symbolique, impossible à négativer, signifiant de la jouissance : Ecrits, p.823).

This patriarchal phallus Φ is the male ego-ideal, the identification to which defines the condition of being a man, which condition is formalised as φ(x).

Lacan’s formula : “there is no sexual relationship” (il n’y a pas de rapport sexuel) says this : the patriarchal phallus Φ is only a paranoiac fiction denying the impossible phallus φ .

The fact is : there is nothing in the place of truth occupied by the S1 in the structure of alienation. The place of truth in the four discourses is nothing but the hole in the apophatico-ontologic topology.

From Heidegger’s History of Being (Geschichte des Seyns) we could say that the paranoiac belief of the ex-sistence of S1 (e.g. τὸ ὄντως ὄν, ἰδέα, οὐσία, essentia, substantia, the God of philosophers and theologians, conatus, Wille zur Macht, Übermensch, etc.) which obturates the apophatico-ontologic hole determines metaphysics.

Now there should remain nothing like such metaphysical delusions anymore, nor the patriarchal phallus Φ the identification to which has been the determinant of the “being a man” in the History of Sexuality.

Philosophers could declare the end of metaphysics. Perhaps an abolition of that paranoia of very long duration ‒ metaphysics and patriarchalism ‒ can be achieved only in one’s own experience of psychoanalysis.